Argument 53 (Wang Tun) Comments Welcome
Wang Tun
:
题目：ARGUMENT53 - Thirteen years ago, researchers studied a group of 25 infants who showed signs of mild distress when exposed to unfamiliar stimuli such as an unusual odor or a tape recording of an unknown voice. They discovered that these infants were more likely than other infants to have been conceived in early autumn, a time when their mothers' production of melatonin-a hormone known to affect some brain functions-would naturally increase in response to decreased daylight. In a follow-up study conducted earlier this year, more than half of these children-now teenagers-who had shown signs of distress identified themselves as shy. Clearly, increased levels of melatonin before birth cause shyness during infancy and this shyness continues into later life.
13年前，研究者研究了一组在受到不熟悉的刺激比如不寻常的气味和未知声音的录音时表现出轻微紧张的25名婴儿。他们发现这些婴儿比其他婴儿更可能在早秋怀孕，而早秋是他们的母亲分泌的melatonin--一种已知会影响一些大脑能的荷尔蒙--因日照的减少而增加的季节。在今年早些时候所作的跟踪调查中，这些表现出紧张迹象的儿童--现在已经是十几岁--有一半以上认为自己害羞。显然，出生前melatonin的增加导致婴儿期的羞涩并且这种羞涩将延续至生命更晚的阶段。
字数：532 用时：0:30:00 日期：2009-8-9
The author's assertion that the infants distress and teenagers' shyness were a result of the increased levels of melatonin(M) is not persuasive at all, for it has so many obvious fatal logic flaws, including reasoning, comparison and survey method.
To begin with, mainly, is the process of reasoning. Let us begin with a small mistake. The author claims in the argument that more than half of these children "indentify themselves" as shy, which is quite subjective. We know that everybody has his own understanding of this term "shy" and his own judgment of whether shy or not. Therefore, it is not proper here to let them evaluate their shyness instead of an objective test. And even if they are indeed shy when grown up, the author's equaling the infant's distress and the teenagers' shyness may still seem groundless. And even if they mean the same thing, or have a strong connection, the argument still fails to substantiate that they are caused by the increased level of M.
The author concludes based on a known correlation between increased levels of M and the infants' distress that the former contribute, at least partly, to the latter. Yet the correlation alone does nothing to convince us the cause-and-effect relationship. Firstly, the argument provides no material of the scientific study of M, thus we don't know what function of it and what effect it will cause definitely. We can only know from the argument that it has some function to affect the brain, but we never know that whether it is the mother's brain or the baby's. Even if it does exert some effects on the infant's brain, we still could not draw the conclusion that the distress and later-life shyness are caused by M without further and more insightful investigation. M may be neither sufficient nor necessary in causing that.
In the second place, there are something needs to be more carefully considered about the comparisons the author make. As is claimed in the argument, they just pick up a group 25 infants who showed signs of mild distress when exposed to some strange favor and sound without mentioning the others. It is entirely possible that a normal child will show signs when exposed to that. Maybe a control group of equal number of infants is needed and the measurement of shyness or distress should be achieved quantitatively from both of the groups, respectively. Moreover, the argument also mentioned that "more than half" of these children blablabla, without taking into the overall level of their peers. There exists a probability that, averagely, there will be more than half of the teenagers that would like to describe themselves as shy.
In the third place, there are also some problems with the survey methodology. It is unreasonable to draw any conclusion from such a small sample of only 25. And it is too early to draw the conclusion that the shyness will continue into later life only based on an observation only till teenager time. They must be followed and observed scientifically ever since to offer more evidences.
To sum up, in this argument, the author groundlessly correlates many different factors to create a non-exsiting cause-and-effect relationship which is quite unwarranted. In order to achieve more convincing conclusions, larger samples and more detailed investigations are needed.
附提纲
Sincerely
yours,
Wang
Tun
ch4w...@gmail.com
August 10, 2009
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Wang Tun | 王 暾
Undergraduate of Mixed Honors Class (Engineering)
Chu Kochen Honors College, Zhejiang University
Major: Optoelectronics, Department of Optical
Engineering
Minor: Advanced Class of Engineering Education
(ACEE)
Cell: (+86)136-5667-9099
Email: ch4w...@gmail.com
Address: Room 4073, Lantian 1st Dorm, Zijingang Campus,
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, P. R.
China